When everything has changed
by Selective scifi junkie
Summary: It has been two years since the pandemic, since a bow became better than a gun and a horse better than a car, since a disease wiped out four billion people in six months. Here and there, where men have a strong enough will to survive, people cling on. Apocafic. Next instalment probably May.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: It has been two years since everything changed, since a bow became better than a gun and a horse better than a car, since a disease wiped out four billion people in six months. Here and there, survivors cling on.**

 **Set: Out of time. Post Ultron.**

 **Spoilers: Avengers Assemble, Avengers Age of Ultron, no other major spoilers.**

 **Genres: Apocafic. Beyond that, some action.**

 **Rating: T for being an apocafic. Moderate violence, more is implied than is seen.**

 **Disclaimer:** **This world belongs Marvel. Only the original characters and this plot are my own.**

 **A note on formatting: The lines with only a comma on them are not intended as time breaks. They are my attempt to preserve some of my original formatting and break the text up to make it easier to read.**

 **A note on shipping: I am a very submissive shipper. I ship where cannon tells me to. If you don't like it, blame Joss Whedon.**

* * *

Carl dropped his head forwards and sighed as the truck's engine coughed feebly. The gas metre read zero, it had done for about ten minutes. They'd been driving so carefully all day, staying at a constant speed, coasting down hills where they could, but the inevitable had happened at last.

"Sorry everyone." He said. "We're out."

"Well I guess we're walking then." Rachel said from the back seat. He looked round at her. She looked exhausted. She hadn't slept last night, she'd been up with Fey, their younger daughter. It wasn't fair. Rachel was such a good mom, and a good wife to him. Whatever else, she didn't deserve this, not now.

"Fey, honey." Carl started. "Do you think you can walk some of the way?" Fey nodded weakly. She was pale and looked more tired than Rachel did.

"How far is it Daddy?" Imogen, their other daughter, asked from beside him. Carl got out of the car and picked up the two rucksacks, containing all they had now, from the trunk. He put one on and handed the other to Rachel.

"Look up there." He said to Imogen, pointing. "Do you see that smoke rising?"

"That's far."

"It looks far, doesn't it sweetie? But where there's smoke, there's fire, and where there's fire, there's people." Imogen nodded. Hopefully, those people had food and water. They had no food and precious little water. And hopefully, they were the sort of people who'd accept a man, a woman and two children with nothing and treat them fairly. There was no way to tell anymore, not since the outbreak, not since everything had fallen to pieces.

,

Clint Barton stooped, picked up the dead pigeon and handed it back to Lila.

"Thanks Dad." She said, a note of sarcasm in her voice.

"C'mon Lila. You get the pony, you get the dead stuff." Lila smiled fleetingly. "You did well today; three pheasants in two hours, two of them dead on impact." He'd had to run and wring the neck of the third. She'd hit it too far back.

"You did better." He had. Two squirrels, a pheasant and a young white-tail buck, only 80 pounds, but not bad.

"How long have I had to practice?" Lila smiled and yanked the pony's head up to keep it from grazing. There was nearly no fuel now. The dozen horses the town had were the main way of getting around. They'd gone back to the dark ages, or nearly. They were clinging on to clean water and antibiotics, not much else had survived. Lack of ammunition was going to make the bow better than a gun again, arrows were easier to make than parabellum rounds. That made him valuable. Teaching his children to arch made them valuable, and worth protecting. He could have got this much game twice as fast on his own, but Lila was getting better. Their hunting was necessary, they couldn't raise enough meat to feed 200 people, they had to go and find it. Barton had been out with his bow almost every day for two years now. It had been months since he'd killed a man. Time was going out with his bow meant killing a man. In a way, this felt purer. He'd always killed to protect, now he killed to provide.

"Dad,"

"Yeah?"

"Can we sing something?"

"Sure, what do you wanna sing?"

"Boy named Sue?"

Clint grinned. "OK. Well, ma daddy left home when I was three,

He didn't leave much to mama and me,

Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze," They didn't so much sing it as chant it, like the old record they'd had at the farm, with the censored curse at the end. It always had been, and still was, odd to hear Jonny Cash's words coming out of a little girl's mouth, but it made her smile. They kept on walking homewards, not hurrying, they'd done their work, and it wasn't fair to make the pony rush with that much stuff on his back. They were at the bit about the fight, when Clint stopped dead and grabbed the pony's bridle.

"-mud and the – Dad?"

Clint ducked under the pony's neck and stared north in to the distance.

"People coming." He said simply. "Go home, quick as you can. If game falls off, don't go back for it. Get home, find Steve and Tasha and tell them we've got people coming." It was a sign of the world they lived in now that Lila's eyes widened with fright.

"What about you?"

"I'm going to look."

"What if they're raiders?"

"Then I don't want to be worrying about whether you're safe. There's not many of them, two or three. I'll be fine. Just go, Lila." Lila gathered up the reins and kicked the lazy animal in to a trot. Clint watched her for a moment, then turned back towards the newcomers. They were moving slowly, which might mean they were heavily armed. All he had was hunting arrows, he'd made most of them, they weren't as good as the arrows made for war. He could still shoot better than most guns. He could take care of himself. In a world where food was worth its weight in almost any metal, raiders came to anywhere with more than a half dozen people. They'd seen off a few groups, some armed like Saharan warlord mercs. He dropped to hands and knees and advanced at a crawl.

 **Updates should be swift. The fic is complete, I just need to deal with doc manager.**


	2. Chapter 2

"Hold it." Carl jumped at the voice after so long walking in silence, Fey clinging to his back now, Imogen and Rachel carrying the packs. A man stood up in the long grass just ahead of them, levelling a bow at them, arrow on the string. Rachel put her hands up. Imogen copied her. What sort of crazy world was it when a little girl of eight had to put her hands up to avoid being shot? Carl couldn't have put his hands up without dropping Fey.

"Are you from the settlement?" Rachel asked. The archer shook his head.

"You answer me first. Who are you and what do you want?"

"We're just people." Carl said. " People looking for some place safe."

"Safe from what?" Rachel shrugged.

"Safe from life, safe from starvation… take your pick." The archer shook his head, relaxing the bowstring slightly, but not letting go of it.

"Nobody's just wandering now. You were somewhere else, you ran off. Why?" Carl drew breath slowly, wondering how he could explain in front of the girls.

"Some men there asked Rachel for something, she said no, they didn't take it well." The archer nodded slowly.

"I can see that happening in some places. Not here. You armed?"

"No."

"I can't take your word for it. Drop the packs."

"You seriously think that with two children-" Rachel protested.

"I'd be staking the lives of the border medic, myself, whoever comes to back me up and potentially anyone in the town, including my kids, if I didn't." Rachel dropped her pack, Imogen went to drop hers, but the archer shook his head. "Not worried about you." Rachel helped Fey down. Fey looked bad.

"You said there's a medic." Carl asked. The archer un-loaded his bow and walked towards them, holding the bow by the end.

"Yeah, we've got three, and a veterinarian if we get desperate." He ran the end of the bow down Carl's sides and his legs. "Just feeling for holsters." He moved on to Rachel. "OK, you won't draw a weapon from the packs in time. I'm happy with that. How long's the girl been sick?" Carl and Rachel glanced at each other.

"Two days?" Carl saw the archer recoil slightly.

"Have you had it and survived or not had it?"

"What?" Carl asked.

"MRYP."

"We never got it." The archer looked hard at him for a second.

"OK. So… you're looking for a group to join?"

"Yeah."

"We do take people in, but there are rules."

"Like what?"

"First of all quarantine." The archer said, looking at the area behind them. "Everyone new that comes in gets quarantined until the border medic's sure they're not carrying MRYP. Then you work for your keep. Everybody does. Kids go to school, but even they work some."

"You've got a school?"

"Yeah. Only forty odd kids in it, but we try."

"Last place had nothing." Rachel said.

Clint stood looking at the family critically. He'd dithered enough, that little girl needed to see a doctor by the look of her. They didn't seem to be armed, and if he needed to he could probably kill both adults before they got a mark on him, and it was very unlikely they'd try, not with two kids in tow. It was the sick girl that was the problem. If she had MRYP, it would be safer for everyone in the village to leave her here to die. But the parents probably wouldn't leave her, he wouldn't leave his kid like that. Anyway, she was just a kid with a fever. That could be anything. The medics trusted the quarantine protocols, it wasn't a big risk.

"Alright. Call it." He said. "You come in to quarantine or you keep walking." The husband and wife looked at each other.

"If we go in to quarantine, what does that mean?" The wife asked.

"That you can't go in to the village yet, you can leave if you want, you'll be fed and given shelter, and meds if the kid needs them and we've got anything."

"But we can't leave?" The husband asked. Clint shook his head.

"You're not prisoners, you leave when you want, but if you go and come back, you have to start quarantine again. And if you steal from us, we will hunt you down." They looked at each other again.

"I don't see we have a lot of choice." The wife said.

"OK then." The husband looked back at Clint. "We're coming with you."

,

A bang like a whip crack made all four newcomers jump.

"It's OK." Clint said quietly, then bellowed. "India Foxtrot, whoever that is. India Foxtrot."

"Clint?" She appeared from the treeline, muddy enough to tell she'd been on heavy work.

"Tasha, we're fine. It's just a bunch looking for some place safe."

"You sure?"

"Tasha, look at them." She smiled.

"Looks can be deceptive. Do you want me to send Banner down?"

"Please. Aren't you calling-"

"Shut up." She turned and jogged back towards the settlement.

,

Clint turned back towards his newcomers. "That way. I'm staying behind you." The man picked the little girl up again, cradling her this time, the woman and the other girl went for the packs. This felt really cruel, letting a kid struggle with a pack that was too heavy for her while he carried nothing. What choice did he have? If he touched them or anything they'd carried, he had to be isolated; he wouldn't be able to go home for five days. He sighed and glanced around. If he could find a longish stick, he might be able to rig something up. Until then he had to be a bad guy.

"How long have you been with this group?" Rachel asked.

"Since it started, pretty much. The guy who set it up, and is still basically in charge, knew where I was holed up, came and found me when everything fell apart."

"So you just hid for the entire outbreak?"

"Pretty much. We've got three kids. We had a farm in Iowa, we cut ourselves off, even when law enforcement went down nobody bothered us."

"We probably would have run if we could." The man said. "Just-"

"Hold it." Clint jogged out to the right and picked up a long stick lying in the grass. "This'll do. Drop the pack, kid." The three of them turned and looked at him, the smaller girl might have fallen asleep, well, hopefully she was asleep. He pulled a piece of string from his pocket and tied a shorter stick across the long one at right angles. "Can you thread the bag's straps across this?" The girl did, frowning as though she didn't know why. "Great. Off we go." He swung the stick on to his shoulder, so the pack hung a few feet behind him. It was as heavy as it looked. The woman stared at him for a second. Clint shrugged his free shoulder. "I felt bad. If I touch you or anything you've touched, I have to be quarantined with you, so I couldn't just take the pack."

"Imogen, say thank you." The woman ordered.

"Thank you, sir." Imogen said faintly. Clint raised his eyebrows

"Sir? I don't know when anyone last called me that? C'mon. It's probably a quarter of a mile." They set off again. For someone who'd spent a lot of his life as an assassin, Clint hated being presumed to be the bad guy, even before he'd had a demi-god invade his head. "So you're Imogen," He said to the girl who was walking, holding her mother's hand, hoping the others would volunteer names.

"Rachel." The woman said. The man sighed.

"I'm Carl. This is Fey." He indicated the girl in his arms. "She's usually really friendly, but…" Clint nodded. He'd been there, felt that. While they'd been holed up hiding from MRYP, Nat had got really sick, fever of 102 for days. They'd known he needed a doctor, they'd also known that every doctor in the country was spending every moment trying to save people from MRYP, so taking him to a doctor was to risk exposing him, and themselves and Cooper and Lila, to the disease. They'd stayed put, hoping against hope that he didn't die, keeping him cool, trying to keep him drinking. Somehow he'd pulled round. Clint thought about offering reassurance, but coming from him it wouldn't mean anything. What did he know?

"I'm Clint."

"You said you'd been here a while." Rachel asked. She probably wanted distracting.

"Yeah, a little over two years, since The Captain realised law enforcement wasn't going to recover, so we should just make the best of it, and came and found me."

"The Captain?"

"The guy in charge here. Good man. He keeps everything going, and works his own backside off doing heavy work."

"Was he actually military or…"

"No, he was a commando, a long time ago. He gathered up a bunch of people he thought would be useful, found a small town with only five or so people left alive and settled in. If everyone works, we cope."

"How many people did he choose?"

"To start out, probably only fifty-odd, but he can't bear to turn people away, so now there's about four times that. We grow crops, raise a few cattle, chickens, geese… we find fuel for our fires, we clean our water, we teach the kids to read and write and do basic math, we can't manage much more, but it's enough. We survive."

"So what do you do?"

"I hunt. That's what the bow's for. We can't raise enough meat, so I go hunting."

"You can't have had a great morning." Carl said.

"No, I had a good morning, I just didn't want to deal with what might have been an attack carrying a dead deer and a bunch of pigeons."

"So you just left them somewhere?"

"I didn't say I was out on my own. There's quarantine." He pointed to with his free hand. "It's not much, but the idea is we can have a gun fight in there and not lose too much."

"Has that happened?" Carl asked.

"Yeah, about eight months ago. We took four guys in for quarantine, they didn't fight the people who walked them in, they both had guns and looked like they knew how to use them. The doctor wasn't armed. They tried to kill him and steal whatever they could."

"What happened?" Rachel asked. Clint chuckled. Trying to kill the doctor in question was always a very bad idea.

"They didn't get far. The doctor was fine, I mean, he was mad," If they only understood how mad… "Really mad, but he wasn't hurt." It probably wouldn't be a good idea to tell them exactly how mad, it would only make them scared of Banner, and so long as they played fair, they didn't need to be. Clint pulled the door open and let the others in ahead of him. "Just dump the bags." Rachel did, so did Clint. "You can put Fey down there." He pointed to one of the decent beds. "I'm gonna stay until the medic, Banner, turns up, then I've got my own work to do." He'd stay close for a while, make sure these people didn't try anything, though he doubted they would, not with two kids in tow.

 **Presumably you can all imagine why shooting the doctor is a very bad idea.**

 **Please review. I've never seen an Avengers apocafic on this site, I want to know what people think of it.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you for sticking with me this far. I hope that this chapter starts to answer some of the questions one or two of you have asked me.**

 **LH, sorry. There are no zombies in this. I'm too much a biologist to tolerate them.**

 **By the way, if you notice any little errors in this, do let me know. I caught myself calling MRYP MRSP once (MRSP is real).**

* * *

Carl didn't know what he'd been expecting the medic to look like, but the greying, curly-haired, stubbly little man didn't look like he'd last long in a firefight. Clint introduced the man as Doctor Banner, the doctor corrected that to 'Bruce', then Clint left, taking his bow out as he did.

"Right," The doctor said, reaching in to the bag he'd brought down. "What I need to do right now is do a basic physical exam on all four of you. I can do that through there," He pointed round the corner. "or in here. All I'm doing is working out if you need treatment now and how long we need to keep you in quarantine." He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. "Whose first?" Carl looked at Fey. So did Bruce. He frowned. "I know it sounds harsh, but I'd rather do her last so I don't spread anything from her to you."

"OK, me then." Carl said. "And I'll stay in here."

Bruce was quick and thorough, feeling their necks, armpits, backs of knees, all the places MRYP was supposed to make you puff up, then listening to their chests, looking in their mouths, taking their temperatures, then poking them in the guts and asking if it hurt, talking to them all the time. He asked most of the questions Clint had, then got more medical.

"What are the four of you vaccinated against?"

"Pretty well everything." Rachel answered.

"Very wise. We only have Tetanus shots left now. Does any of you know you're positive for anything? Diabetes, Hep…"

"No." Carl replied. "We're all healthy." Then he glanced at Fey.

"I pity anyone who's diabetic or anything." Rachel said. "Our group started out with five or six diabetics, only one's left." There was a time they'd have been wary about saying that sort of thing in front of the girls. There was no point in shielding them now. They'd seen a lot of people die.

"Yeah, we had two diabetics, one's still coping just by diet but… That said, we've got one with Cystic Fibrosis who's still going."

"So how come you got the short straw today?" Rachel asked. Bruce looked questioningly at her as he felt under her chin. "You're stuck here, aren't you? And you're in the line of fire."

"I'm always the border medic." Bruce replied. "I had MRYP and survived, so I should be immune."

"I guess that makes you a lucky one." Carl said.

"The 3%." Bruce said. "Maybe, yeah. I don't have family, so I volunteered to go and treat the earliest cases in the country."

"You had space suits." Imogen said, she hadn't spoken in hours. The water and biscuit Bruce had given her seemed to be waking her up. "You had space suits to keep the germs out."

"Yeah, we had space suits." Bruce said, smiling faintly. "It got in anyway. I went down with it, then there's about four days I don't remember, and I'm glad I don't, then I got up again and went back to work."

"It felt like it was never going to end, didn't it?" Rachel said. Bruce nodded.

"Do you remember watching it move East through Asia? Nobody took much notice until it got to China and India, then we really realised it could spread person to person and it was resistant to near enough everything." Bruce shook his head.

"And we though New York was Armageddon a couple of years back." Carl said. Bruce looked up at him.

"You were there?"

"No, just saw it on TV. You?"

"I was in New York that day."

"Serious? How much did you see?"

"Quite a lot; those great big ships like snakes in the sky…"

"What did you think of it then?"

"Ah…" Banner hesitated. "I don't think I was thinking much. I was just trying to not get killed. Then when the dust settled there were people to help. So what were you before all this happened?" There it was, the sussing them out, the 'what can you do for the group' question.

"A lot less stressed." Rachel offered. Bruce laughed.

"Weren't we all?"

"I was a software engineer." Carl said. "Not a lot of call for it now."

"I guess not." Bruce said.

"I was a freelance carpenter before kids." Rachel said. Bruce looked up at her.

"I could kiss you." Carl frowned at the other man. "I won't, but you have no idea how much we want someone who can do that. The only material we can build or repair with is wood, we don't have anything else, and nobody really knows what they're doing." Well that was something. Rachel at least they would actually value, and for something other than what Jake at the last place had 'valued' her for.

"You three I'm not concerned about." Bruce said, once he'd looked over all three of them. He'd let Fey sleep so far, poor kid probably needed it. "So far as I'm concerned, you can do the ten day quarantine and go."

"What about Fey?" Rachel asked. Bruce breathed out hard.

"Do you wanna wake her up?" Rachel walked across to Fey and put a hand on her shoulder. The kid was pale, worryingly pale. "Probably better it's Mom than a strange man."

"Hey sweetie," Rachel started. "Time to wake up now." She shook her gently. "C'mon Fey. Time to wake up." Fey rolled over a bit. "C'mon sweetie. There's a doctor here to look at you, so we can see about getting you better." Fey coughed faintly. Bruce frowned. Of course, if Fey had MRYP, there was next to no hope for her.

"How long has she been ill?" Bruce asked.

"About two days, about since we left the other place." Rachel answered.

"Is that when she started coughing?"

"Ah…" Rachel bowed her head, thinking. "She had a cold for a couple of weeks, but she was more sneezing than coughing. She's been coughing… probably three or four days?" Bruce nodded. If she'd had MRYP for that long, she'd be dead by now. Of course, it could be a cold, then MRYP. He smiled at Fey.

"Hello young lady." She smiled back fleetingly. "Let's see if we can't figure out what the matter is." He kept a conversation going with her while he examined her, found out that she liked drawing and growing things, and that her favourite pony was Pinkie-pie. She said that as though she expected him to know what it meant. He just smiled and nodded. She coughed now and then throughout, but didn't have a tracheal pinch to speak of, whatever was making her cough was lower down. Her submandibular lymph nodes were up a bit, her axillary lymph nodes were up a bit, her subclavian lymph nodes were palpable. That wasn't reassuring. Neither was her fever of 100.1°F. She said nothing hurt much, but her head ached. Heart was normal, some lung crackles, which nobody else had had.

"OK." He said when he thought he'd found everything he was going to find. "I need to talk to Mom or Dad on their own now." Carl came outside with him.

"How bad?" He asked straight away.

"Honest answer, I don't really know. A lot of her lymph nodes are up, which is something MRYP always does, but they're not dark, MRYP nodes are usually purple-y. She's got a fever too high to ignore and there's that cough. If the cough were MRYP she'd be a lot worse than this by now."

"If it is MRYP?"

"I can't promise it's not, but my gut is telling me no."

"But if it is." Bruce drew breath slowly. There was nothing he hated about being a doctor more than this. Telling an adult they were going to die could be kind of OK, this never was.

"If it is MRYP, we're unlikely to be able to save her." Carl drew the big breath of someone who though it wasn't acceptable to be upset, but was. "We can try, we can keep her comfortable, but…" Of course it was OK for him to be upset. He'd just told him his daughter might be going to die a horrible death.

"What about the rest of us?"

"Whatever it is, Fey could give it to us. You three may already have it. I could have got it in the last half hour."

"But you've had MRYP, you'll be OK." OK might be too strong a word. For Bruce, the first symptom hadn't been fever. Even before he'd been isolated for that, he'd known there was something wrong. The other guy had got restless, way more restless than he could explain. It had got worse and worse as the disease progressed. When the pain at the start of the gangrene kicked in, he'd known he had to run. He'd broken containment, taken a Hazmat suit and just got as far away from other people as he could. He didn't remember much of the journey, just the pain and the desperate need to keep the other guy down until he was far enough away. He'd woken up days later, stark naked and in the middle of nowhere, then gone right back to work.

"Right now, I'm going to call the other medics and figure out what we can give her."

,

"So Banner's down there for the time being?" Steve asked her. Natasha nodded. Clint's little strays made sure of that. She looked down at her hands, she hadn't quite managed to get all the mud out from under her nails, but she was clean enough for dinner. Steve was no cleaner. "Sometimes I feel bad making him do that the whole time."

"He can't die of it." Natasha reasoned. "If we have a medic who literally can't die, why not shove them on the dangerous work?" Steve shrugged.

"You miss him when he's in quarantine."

"Yeah, but I'm a patient creature. I don't mind waiting."

"They said this might be a long one. One of them's sick, she might have it."

"Cap." Natasha turned to see Tony striding towards them. "Any news on sending out for more metals? I can't keep going forever on what I've got right now." Tony was, unsurprisingly, chief mechanic. He and his two apprentices maintained the generators, the few vehicles they'd kept and anything else electrical they bothered to maintain, and metal tools. There was next to no gas left and very little electricity, but still Tony did better than you'd expect. It seemed to be how he coped with loss. He was still mourning Pepper, and Rhodey. Left to his own devices, he might have disappeared down a bottle. Natasha had been there through the worst of it, she'd caught MRYP about the same time as Pepper. She'd been laid out for three days, half the time it had taken Pepper to die. She'd come out of quarantine and found Stark alone, drunk and staring in to space. Being given orders and made to follow them had kept him going. It had kept a lot of people going.

"I know." Steve said. "Has nobody told you yet? We had four wanderers turn up today, they had a car, it's out of gas two miles north of here." Tony raised his eyebrows.

"No, hadn't heard that. So can I have it hauled in tomorrow?"

"Probably. I'll check once I've eaten. I'm starving."

"Makes two of us." Natasha put in.

"What were you two doing today?" Tony asked.

"Digging the new latrine pit." Steve said. Natasha might have lied otherwise.

"Nice." Tony said.

"There's nothing in it yet, it's just soil." Steve said.

"So we had a super-soldier and a master assassin digging a big hole all day."

"Yup." Natasha said. It wasn't that she resented digging as such, she just felt it was a bit of a waste for her. She'd spent decades being made in to a perfect weapon, she'd found people she wanted to wield her, now what was she doing? She'd gone over to the Avengers, a team made to save the world. Save the world from what? What the world had really needed saving from was something so small nobody could see it, something that clung to mouths and skin and tore people apart from the inside, something no marksman could hit, no fighter could batter down. Steve looked pensively at her for a moment.

"Natasha, you pay your keep. Even when we're not under attack, you're never sick, you're stronger than any other woman on camp, and almost all the men, you don't tire, you'll climb near enough anything…" He was getting unnervingly good at reading her mind.

"Hey." Clint came up from the other direction. "Anything more on the strays yet?"

"Banner says he thinks the adults and the older girl are OK." Steve answered. "But he's worried about the little girl." Clint sighed.

"She didn't look good. MRYP worried or just… worried?"

"He said he can't rule MRYP out." Natasha replied.

"You think they'll behave?" Tony asked.

"They've got kids in tow. It'd be a dumb risk."

"D'you remember that bunch last fall?" Tony asked, grinning. Everyone else nodded.

"How could we forget?" Natasha said, half to herself. She and Steve had been bringing in potatoes – again, glamorous work – when they'd heard the Hulk roar. They'd dropped their work, picked up his shield and her gun, neither was ever far away, and just run. They'd found the quarantine post smashed out, from the inside, a corpse with a caved skull and the remains of Bruce's shirt. One bit had a bullet hole and a great big bloodstain on it. It hadn't been difficult to work the rest out. They'd followed the Hulk's trail away from the settlement (thankfully), finding more dead men, some still with guns in their hands. There had been no fight to join in on, she'd got the Hulk down and that had been that. It had shaken Bruce. Being forced to transform by injury or panic always did. He was OK if he just came to help them see off raiders, a giant green rage monster was very useful for that, but when he really didn't see it coming it still scared him. The quarantine nutters had shot him in the back when he turned round to glove up. He'd been being a doctor, then next thing he knew he was huge, green and crazy. He'd held her at arms length for a few weeks after. And still he volunteered as the border medic. He reasoned that if a medic was going to get shot or get sick, better it was him.

They started to pass other groups of people heading in for food, all talking amongst themselves.

" – but it's not as though we're dating or anything - "

" – it's just her reading that's letting her down, so if - "

"No, I don't think you do necessarily arrive at double predestination based on - "

"But why Mommy?"

"Yeah, but there's only so fast we can - " With her eyes closed and a weapon on her somewhere, Natasha could have been almost anywhere in the world before everything changed, before MRYP wiped out about 4 billion people. People were still people; still stupid, still narcissistic, still worried about getting food, safety and companionship, still trying to pretend they cared about other things. Even when no semblance of the US, Chinese or Russian governments remained, some things never changed.

 **Please review**

 **Also, would anyone like to guess or deduce anything about MRYP? It is based on a real disease.**


	4. Chapter 4

**This is the last chapter. Thank you for sticking with me this far.**

* * *

Bruce led his four patients up the hill towards the settlement. They'd waited fourteen days, Fey had got worse, then she'd levelled off, she still wasn't well, but she was improving now and there was no way it was MRYP. None of the others had even picked up a fever. They were OK. Steve was waiting for them at the edge of the village. He liked to meet new arrivals himself.

"Everyone," Bruce started. "this is The Captain, Steve Rogers. Steve, this is Carl, Rachel, Imogen and Fey." Steve shook hands with them in turn.

"It's very good of you to take us in." Rachel said, her face suggested she'd been expecting somebody older. If she only knew…

"Don't mention it." Steve said. "We don't leave people to starve. Bruce said you're a carpenter."

"I'm not very good."

"Well, if anyone ever paid you a dime for it, you're probably better than any of us. We've got tools, there was a carpenter who lived here, by the look of it, he didn't have time to pack his things up. If you're missing anything you need, we have a good mechanic. He might be able to help you out."

"So how does this all work?" Carl asked. "Do people carry on their trades or what?"

"Not all trades are still useful." Steve replied. "If not, you either retrain or just go where we need the hands. There's always work."

"And the girls?"

"School." Steve said. Imogen huffed. "Sorry, you don't get out of that one."

"Housing?"

"You're a family. You take over a house if you find one fit for habitation. Frankly, that's why we need a carpenter. There are a few that are OK, but we won't be able to keep taking people in forever. And," Steve hesitated. "Clint told me why you were running. We won't stand for that here. If anyone is bad to you, anyone, tell me, or tell Bruce or Tasha or Clint. It's not acceptable. We will exile people if they try that sort of thing." Rachel breathed in slowly.

"Thank you."

"So the way-" Steve started, but the radio in his belt bleeped. "Sorry." He picked it up.

"East fields to Mechanic, where are the trucks today, over?"

"All in here except one on the South side." Tony's voice replied. "Why? Over."

"I think we can see two moving around to the East of us. Over." Bruce felt himself tense. Nobody'd bothered them for months.

"That's not us. Over."

"Where are they headed?" Steve asked. "Over."

"Don't know. Maybe this way. Over."

"First line marksmen, if you're listening to this, go get your guns and head East. Let's stop this before it starts. Out." He lowered the radio. "It may be nothing, but in case it's not, we're responding. Trouble more often comes from the East than the West. They won't get through us."

"Should I? - " Bruce started.

"No. Not yet. Keep the radio. We'll call if it gets bad." Steve turned and picked up his shield from against a porch and started running. Bruce stared after him for a moment, then turned back to his patients.

"They'll be fine. Come on."

,

Natasha was there before Steve. The three, not two, jeeps were definitely coming towards them. Four first line marksmen were already settling themselves behind the palisade fence, there was a ditch on the far side, steep and deep enough to block vehicles, but not men. Men would be shot.

"OK soldiers!" She called. "Until the Captain says otherwise, normal rules apply. We don't shoot until they do." She hated the rule. But Steve insisted they had to be given the chance to say they wanted to trade, so they shot second. The three vehicles were pretty close now and not slowing down. That looked worryingly like a mounted machine gun on one of them.

"Clint, swap places with Danny." Steve ran up behind them. They did as he said, as usual, he was almost always right. Steve jumped on top of the mound in to plain sight, waiting for the oncoming guns to do something. There was a very pregnant pause. Steve was holding his shield over his neck and chest to give himself some protection, but a head shot would still probably kill him. It was a stupid rule. As Natasha had predicted, there was a rattle of gunfire and Rogers jumped off backwards, apparently unhurt.

"Open fire." He ordered calmly. "Tyres and drivers." Natasha, and everyone else, did. She hit two tyres, neither burst. There was something in them or on them. Barton had already shot one driver, she shattered the windscreen of the second and let someone else get the kill shot in while she reloaded. She'd started with a half-empty clip. There wasn't much ammunition left. There were a lot of hostiles, at least six per vehicle. They didn't seem to be afraid to die, they stopped all three and were using them as cover. One group was using their dead driver to stop shots under the jeep, not that they were possible from this angle.

"Cap?" She asked, sticking her head up to shoot. A torrent of machine gun fire flew over her head as she ducked again. She didn't think she'd killed the guy she'd shot at, probably winged him. "Two mounted machine guns."

"One." Barton corrected, ducking again. Something smaller than an apple flew over the fence, as though it had been thrown.

"Down!" Natasha bellowed. She threw herself flat, hands over her ears, waiting for the grenade to go off. There was a weird, muffled metallic clang. She looked round. Steve was lying on his back, looking winded, shield on top of him. He'd put his shield on the grenade and lain on the shield. Another one came flying over. Steve was too winded to get to it. "Stay down." She repeated, guarding her head. It landed too far back to do much damage.

"Cap, we're out-gunned." Barton shouted, diving flat again after his next shot. A section of fence fell on top of him, shot through. "Call the cavalry." Steve nodded and rolled over.

"Four left, four right, break up their fire." They started to crawl, the fence wouldn't protect them from machine guns at this range, it was more to blind enemies anyway. Steve picked up his radio, which was, miraculously, intact. "Marksmen to cavalry, respond."

"Copy." Bruce picked up straight away. He must have been waiting.

"Get down here. We'll lose men if we fight this out. Over."

"Coming. Out." Natasha stopped when they were about fifty feet from where they'd started. She and Barton kept on popping up, picking their shots, then ducking again. They were killing, not every shot, but they were killing. Grenades started coming again. Steve seemed to have decided that was his job, catching them, throwing them back, or anywhere, but they were starting to cook them off. They were exploding in mid air now, just too far away to hurt them, but only just. Then a lone figure came running down the path behind them, barefoot and bare chested. Bruce, head down, breathing hard, if you didn't know, he'd look so unthreatening, but even at this distance she could see the other guy starting to push forwards. He was starting to turn green. She grinned, even as she swatted another grenade away, towards Bruce, it wouldn't hurt him. The grenade went off as Bruce vaulted the fence, hand green and suddenly massive. She heard the cries of shock and alarm as the attackers saw the huge green thing standing in front of them, then the roar of the Hulk enraged, then screams of panic, then pain.

"Up." Steve shouted. Natasha scrambled over the fence after him. Both mounted machine guns were mangled strips of steel, the Hulk had learned a little strategy. They were trying, the attackers really were trying to kill this thing that was grabbing them by heads or limbs and throwing them like rag dolls or slamming them against the ground; shotgun slugs, flashbangs, something that looked like an anti-tank gun, but all they did was make him angrier. Clint stopped on top of the fence and opened fire, so did the other marksmen, Natasha and Steve ran forwards, avoiding the Hulk's crossfire. They knew each other so perfectly now, she didn't have to look to know where he was, he barely looked at her, he still didn't flinch when she bounced off his shield to gain ground fast. The attackers were turning to run, they couldn't accept surrender. The risk was too great, Steve'd tried once or twice early on, but quarantining people who wanted to get out was difficult and dangerous. These men had asked for it, they'd freely chosen to come in guns blazing. They were running now, the marksmen shooting at backs. She turned to run after them.

"Hold it." She stopped and looked back at Steve. "We check these, then you go get Bruce."

The Hulk had been thorough, every man by the jeeps was genuinely dead, some of them more obviously than others. She looked at Steve for permission before she started off down the hill, the Hulk was easy to follow. She wouldn't catch up with him until he'd run them all down, or lost track of them. She found him a quarter mile away, down on all fours, two broken bodies beside him, throwing one of them in to the ground over and over again.

"Hey Big Guy." Just making him aware of her, never sneak up on something stronger than you unless you're going to attack it. He turned to face her, snorting. She crouched down. "C'mere." He flinched back, rising to his feet. He usually did, he usually acted like he didn't want to come down, but he wanted to come to her. She held one hand up. He threw his head down and snorted. He'd come. He always did. She started to hum. He knelt down and offered his hand. He knew what to do with his hand now. She held hers palm up, he held the back of his hand over hers. She pulled her hand out and ran it down his wrist and up his palm, then his fingers, each as thick as her wrist. He looked up at her. It was strange. Sometimes she could see Bruce through this thing's eyes. There was an association tied to her now, something very basal, something Bruce had suggested could be stronger than rage or fear. He didn't get up, but he straightened, pulling his hand away, bringing them both in to his chest. He started to shrink, she lowered her head, the pitch of his breathing started to change, he was only just bigger than Steve now, and still shrinking. He'd fallen to hands and knees, he reared up again, uncoordinated. She reached out to catch him, the flesh at the nape of his neck was pink.

"I got you." She said softly as the man in her arms twisted and fell against her. "I got you." The man sighed heavily, his breathing starting to slow down. He was usually very still for a couple of seconds after. When he held her back, she knew she was OK. She smiled. He looked up at her, fully Bruce now. She pulled him closer and leant her head against his.

"You OK?" He asked after a moment.

"Yeah. You?"

"Fine."

"Your aim's improving, no collateral damage. Not even the fence. C'mon." She got up, pulling him with her. "We gotta find Steve. There's work to do." She started walking back up the hill, hearing Bruce just behind her. Some things didn't change.

 **Fin**

 **The disease which wiped out four billion people is, as you know, MRYP. MRYP is Multidrug Resistant Yersinia pestis, well done to Rose Justice for guessing. Yersinia pestis is the bacterium responsible for the Black Death which ravaged Europe in the middle ages. Antibiotic resistance is a real and rapidly growing problem. I do not mean to scare-monger, but the way antibiotic resistance is growing, pandemics like this will become a real risk again within my lifetime.**

 **Thanks as usual to my brother for learning to imagine with me, for my Grandmother for being an inspiration and to God for creating the world and everything in it. Solo Dei Gloria.**


	5. Chapter 5

Carl, Rachel and the girls were led away not long after Bruce had been called off towards the fight (though what the hell a guy like that was expected to do in a fight was still a mystery to Carl), by a woman who introduced herself as:

"Laura. My husband's the one who brought you in." then added "He's been thinking about you a lot, you know." As they reached the threshold of what might once have been a school, an unearthly roar made them all jump.

"Mummy, what-" Fey started.

"Don't mind that." Laura said; she hadn't turned a hair. It sounded again. Carl had heard a lion and he'd heard a bear. That sure as hell wasn't either of those. "It's a good sign." Laura said.

"OK, what does it mean?" Rachel asked. Laura smiled.

"Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies?" She said apologetically. "It's not mine to tell. Just, don't worry. It won't hurt _us_." She pushed the door open and led them in to what must once have been a school hall. About twenty children from maybe four to ten were standing in a circle, chanting and clapping their hands.

"Walkin' down the street,  
She didn't know what to do,  
So she-" A handful more that were too young for that were playing in a corner, watched by two women.

"What's this?" Imogen asked.

"This is school." Laura replied. Imogen frowned. "Well, it's recess right now, but it'll be school again in a minute." One of the smallest children had either seen Laura or known her voice. It sat up and called for her. She glanced over her shoulder, then ignored it. "That's my youngest." She said. "He needs to learn it's not the end of the world if I don't come straight away."

"How did you know to come find us?" Rachel asked.

"Oh, I just heard the call to arms, and I knew you were with Bruce and the Captain, so you might get left."

"Why did Bruce go?" Carl asked. "He sure doesn't look like a fighter." Laura shrugged. A girl maybe nine years old waved Fey and Imogen over. Carl nodded, letting them go.

"He's useful to have if things get bad down there. He's always the medic that ends up in the firing line. He's OK with that."

"Did he lose everyone to it?" Rachel asked, softly enough that the children wouldn't hear. "Is that why he doesn't care if he dies?" They'd met men like that. Some of them were incredibly dangerous. Laura shook her head.

"No, he just… He never really… He never had kids, I don't think, he wasn't married, there's nobody he _has_ to keep going for, you know? It's different once you've got children. Your life doesn't really belong to you anymore, his life is his to lose." She looked away. Carl was no detective, but the woman wasn't exactly a perfect liar. Something there wasn't quite right.

Something else wasn't quite right when the fighters came back. They barely had a scratch between them. A column of smoke was rising behind them. Bruce was walking in step with a slender, red-haired woman, who looked a good deal calmer than anyone else in the group. Carl though it would be better to listen than to ask. A black-haired man, probably in his fifties was jogging up to them.

"Cap! Cap!"

"Yeah?" The Captain replied.

"Trucks."

"Yes, three." The Captain replied. "Only one has a full set of tyres right now. You can do it tomorrow."

"And presumably a good armoury, else you wouldn't have called a code green."

"Yeah, it has improved our ammo situation a bit, there's probably stuff you can smelt down."

"What's the collateral damage like?" The black-haired man asked.

"Not bad at all." The red-haired woman said. "One of the jeeps might not go, it got chucked over, but the chassis is OK, the mounted guns are a mess, a couple of bent rifles, not a lot else." What the hell had this lot been using that had thrown a jeep over and bent a load of guns? Something that made a horrible noise, that was for sure. What the hell had they walked in to? The group of fighters was starting to break up. He tried to catch Bruce's eye to ask, but Bruce wouldn't look at him. He was holding his head low, he looked shattered. The woman had taken his arm and was leading him. She saw Carl standing in the shadow of a house and ignored him. The Captain didn't. He stopped, falling back from the group, looking steadily at Carl.

"Carl? Are you alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine. The girls are… fine, and…" He tailed off, unnerved by the younger man's directness. "Look, I came out because I wanted to find out what the hell was going on in that fight. I heard something roar that wasn't a bear or a mountain lion. I brought my wife and my kids in to this place because I thought it was safe. Can you honestly tell me that that's true?" He'd drawn himself up to full height. He still wasn't as tall as the Captain. The Captain looked at him steadily.

"No. Compared to how the world was five years ago, nowhere is safe, but here is probably safer than most."

"What the hell were you using in there? Flipping jeeps over, tearing up guns-"

"It shouldn't be a danger to civilians." The Captain said firmly. "The way we won that fight is an ace card, I wouldn't want to fight it, but it isn't like a grenade with the pin out, it is under control. That thing will only harm you if you're a serious threat to it or to the town."

"So why the hell do you want so bad to keep it a secret?"

"I'm sure you can imagine why our enemy not knowing what they're up against helps us. I hope you never have to see it. Just know that it's strong, it keeps us safe and you'll only see it if you're in serious trouble. Don't pick fights, and you'll be OK. We do want you to stay, all four of you, but there are some things we don't shout about. When you do find out, you'll understand."

"And I just take your word for it."

"Yeah." They stared at each other. Carl didn't know him. He didn't know anything about this man, but they'd taken them in. This lot had sheltered them, fed them, even while Fey was sick, they'd risked a doctor for them, even when it could have been MRYP. He had no grounds to trust this man, not really, but he'd definitely met men who were a hell of a lot worse. He looked down. The Captain nodded.

"Come on. Dinner's soon." He turned and walked away. He'd had a huge metal disk earlier, what had he done with it? What did he do with that thing in a fight anyway? Catch bullets? Carl smirked to himself and fell in behind the Captain. This would do. Until they knew otherwise, this would do.

 **I didn't intend to come back to this. There still isn't a plot arc in any meaningful sense, but if people want me to, I can try to write a few one shots of how this situation arose.**


	6. Chapter 6

**So apparently I am carrying this on, sort of. This chapter and the subsequent one are set during the outbreak, so please expect them to be pretty bleak.**

Natasha closed the lid of her computer and closed her eyes for a moment. Regimes fell every day, especially these days. She made a point of not weeping over it. But some regimes mattered more than others. Bejing had gone quiet, Mumbai had declared itself fallen, with over 60% of its population dead and the number still rising, North Korea had stopped stamping its feet, the security around the US government was getting insane, trying to keep it out. But somebody had managed to get it in to SHIELD. On purpose, by accident, they'd probably never know. They'd probably not have the manpower to find out. Early estimates suggested that some 55% of SHIELD personnel were exposed already, so probably 53.5% would die, even if they controlled it perfectly.

It was spreading. It was tracking across the USA in every direction, from the borders and the coasts inwards. All air travel was suspended, state borders were closed. Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska… a handful of states didn't have it yet. But it had only been in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina six weeks ago. It was taking New York, with alarming speed. Everything was closed, she hadn't left Stark Tower in three days. And now she felt cold. Jarvis had said the temperature in here was completely normal. She curled herself up in her chair, balling her fists in her armpits – what was that?

She slipped one hand down her top and felt, not daring to breathe. A smooth, sore lump, about the size of a peach stone slipped out from under her fingers. She inhaled sharply, not from the pain. Oh god. Enlarged lymph nodes, there only had to be one. The trained mind, the Black Widow mind reacted. If it was MRYP, she'd deteriorate fast. Her fever would rise to 102 or higher, she'd start to hurt in various places, she might fit, she might lose the tips of her fingers. And of course there was a horrendous mortality rate; over 90% by anybody's guess. Forget the hundred. They're not your problem. Your problem is one, yourself. Most data seemed to suggest her odds were better if she went for treatment straight away, but if she wasn't infected, hospital would definitely infect her. If she stayed, she was a risk to Stark and Potts. But to go was to admit she had it, to surrender to death. She wouldn't surrender. She only surrendered if she had a way out.

She reached for her cell phone. The networks were starting to go down, but Bruce had managed to get a text to her three days ago. She'd hardly seen him in a month, he'd gone to work the MRYP wards. She pulled the last text up again, she hadn't deleted it, she'd wanted on-going proof it had been real.

"Seems The Black Death can't kill me either. I'm back at work, seem to be through it. See you when I can." Two Avengers had survived it now, Rogers had got it really early, the serum had dragged him through. With no other work to do – he'd found Barnes dead and the Avengers weren't up to much – he'd gone to dig graves. Wilson had died, Rhodes had been quarantined for it ten days ago. They hadn't heard anything.

Natasha started to type. Just three words. Three little words. That was all she needed.

"I have it." Well, she didn't know for sure yet. She dragged the cursor back to amend it, then the phone rang. She dropped it and barked in shock. It was a ringing phone, how stupid was she? It was Potts.

"Yeah?" She picked up, her voice sounded nearly normal.

"Natasha, I…" There was a long pause. "Could you come up here please?" Natasha swallowed.

"I don't think that's a-"

"Natasha, I think I have it." There was a very long silence.

"So do I." She heard Potts take a breath as though she was trying not to cry.

"What do we do?" Being asked, suddenly it was clear.

"We go. Chances are we'll infect Stark if we don't." Potts gasped.

"Oh god, I need to tell-"

"Leave a note. He's a stubborn pig, he'll try to stop us." Potts took another breath, trying to steady herself.

"Do we need to take anything?"

"With us? No. Downstairs in five?"

"OK." Potts hung up. Natasha lowered the phone. Her unsent text was still there. The backs of her eyes burned. She pressed send. The phone shook in her hand.

"Message not delivered." She gave a soft cough of laughter.

No one bothered them on the journey. They had those papery yellow sashes the government had given out to wear if you thought you were infected, so people knew not to go near you. A CEO and a master assassin, walking together in broad daylight like lepers. They said nothing to each other. What could they have said? Even to Clint, Natasha wasn't sure she'd have said anything, or wanted him to say anything. She might have sworn again that if she made it out and he didn't, she would do whatever it took to protect his kids. How would he know if she died? Probably Rogers or Bruce would get it to him eventually.

There was a bit of a queue outside the hospital. A crew of men was loading black bags in to the back of a lorry. It didn't take a lot of imagination to work out what was in the black bags. A lot of people in the queue were crying. Potts was starting to. A few people nearer the door were handcuffed, being held by people in hazmat suits; resisters. Those that knew they were infected, but wouldn't go to quarantine. They looked really bad. One of them had purple fingertips, another had huge purple lumps under his chin. Two of them were overtly sobbing. Natasha didn't feel like crying. She felt… frustrated, disappointed. She'd survived the Winter Soldier, twice, made it out of Russian service alive, she'd got away from the Hulk, she could kill twenty gunmen with a knife, now this was going to kill her? A bloody disease? It was stupid. It was a way little children and old people died. Master assassins did not die like this. She heard the doors of the lorry slam shut, the men started to move away. One of them looked over towards the queue. He was tall and fair-haired, well built. He was handling bodies without a hazmat suit, he must have had it and lived. He was just staring towards her. She stared back, then suddenly realised who she was looking at; the stubbornly upright posture, refusing not to stand tall, the sharp, clear lines of his face, the sheer size of him. Rogers. She was looking at Rogers. She hadn't seen him since he'd had it. He'd lost weight. Of course he had. He raised an arm and saluted her. He'd been handling bodies, he couldn't come close. Natasha drew a breath, straightened and saluted back. He held her eyes for a moment, then turned and walked away.

She lost track of Pots at initial examination. A young woman, maybe twenty-eight, no rings, pierced ears, bitten nails, felt the lump in Natasha's armpit, took her temperature, asked her a couple of questions, told her she was sorry and sent her further in to the hospital. Everywhere smelled of sickness and bleach. Someone else asked her for name, address and next of kin. Everything except next of kin was a lie. She named Bruce and Steve. No way she was telling anyone where Clint was. She was put in a twin room that had, presumably, been meant for one, but they were out of space. There was a screen between her and the other woman, she was strictly instructed not to cross the line, or she'd be handcuffed to the bed. Like that would stop her. It would remind her of her childhood, nothing more.

The next two days were just unpleasant. There was worse behind her, she knew that, but they were consuming while she was in them. Her headache got worse, other lymph nodes swelled up and became painful. The woman on the other side of the curtain groaned and whimpered. Natasha kept her mouth shut. She could be burned with flamed metal, endure an hour of strappado or Chinese Bench, have her fingernails drawn and endure it. This would not make her cry out. The woman beside her was taken away and replaced within hours, by someone who lay sobbing. Natasha was a Black Widow. Black Widows did not cry unless they wanted to appear weak. Hours after that, a doctor came and lifted her arm, making her grimace. He sighed.

"Does it hurt?" He asked her. He sounded very tired.

"Does it matter?"

"Just answer me, OK?"

"Yes." She said calmly. He sighed again.

"I'm sorry. You can't stay here." 100 breaths later, four people wearing hazmat came and surrounded her bed. She lifted her head a little.

"Just lie down ma'am." One of them said. They were taking her out of quarantine. Of course, she had it, so there was no reason for her to stay. Each of them took a corner of her bedsheet and carried her through several sets of doors to a ward that smelled of worse than bleach; vomit, blood, dead flesh. Someone somewhere was murmuring like a madman, most of the people she could see were still. Some of the staff were in hazmat, some weren't; the 'had and survived'. Everything hurt worse for being disturbed.

"Bed twelve." Somebody close by said, a man, with a voice she thought she recognised, though her brain wasn't working that well. She lifted her head. "I'll get her on Ciproflox and something for pain." The man appeared from behind the hazmat suit. He caught sight of her. His face fell further. "Oh god, not you." He said quietly. She closed her eyes for a second. She'd known Bruce was here, he'd had it and lived. But she hadn't been prepared to see him, or to see him see her and know she was going to die. They started moving her again. Once they'd put her down, Bruce reappeared, holding an IV bag, two syringes and a blanket. The hazmat group left. He was thinner than he had been, pale and gaunt looking. He couldn't be getting much sleep.

"Hey." She said softly.

"Hey." He changed her fluid bag and emptied one of the syringes in to it. "Can I take a look at you?"

"Sure." Her voice was weak from lack of use. He went about it the same way every other medic had in the past three days; neck, armpits, hands, feet, backs of knees, groin. He came back to her head and said.

"No necrosis yet, which is something, you're still quite with it, you haven't been coughing, have you?"

"No."

"Good. The ones that cough always die." He crouched down so his head was level with hers. She turned her head to him. "We're gonna get you through this Tasha. I need you to believe that, OK?"

"Bet you say that to all the girls." She managed. Bruce smiled.

"Not the ones I think are as good as dead. Do you want something for pain? They didn't give you any because you weren't complaining, but…"

"If you could."

 **Please review**

 **More to follow shortly**


	7. Chapter 7

**This picks up exactly where the previous one left off**

She lost track of time completely once she was on the MRYP ward. Worsening pain, increasing painkillers and at one point being too weak to lift her head did that. Just about the first thing she remembered clearly after that was Bruce holding her hand, stroking her hair back and telling her the worse was over, that she seemed to be coming through it. She hadn't believed him the first time. She thought he just didn't want to tell her she was about to die. Then the pain started to go, things became clearer, she began to wonder if he'd been telling the truth. When she was strong enough, she twisted to look at her armpits. The swelling was going. There was still a great purple patch, but it wasn't so swollen now. She looked around properly. She didn't recognise either of the people next to her, the previous ones had probably died and been replaced. At that stage, she still had a sense that the best thing she could do was sleep. Some vague amount of time after that, Bruce came and told her it was time for her to go, that she needed to go back to Isal now.

"How long have I been here?" She said, her voice was even worse now.

"A week." He replied. "Which does not break the record for fastest recovery."

"Whose record?"

"Guess." She smiled.

"Rogers?"

"Who else. Though managing his pain was fun. Anyway, you're going to convalescence. Come on."

She was there for seven days, she was pretty sure of the time by now. A lot of people in convalescence sat and cried all day, presumably someone they'd cared about hadn't made it out. The pain continued to recede, her strength started to come back. She worked at it. She couldn't leave her room, but walking up and down it a few times was all she could manage the first day. She'd lost quite a lot of weight. She treated it like she'd been trained to treat any recovery period; do what your body can bear, sleep, eat. Nothing else. Particularly not thinking. She didn't want to remember the past week or so; the exhausted hopelessness dragging at the eyes of all the medics, that little girl next to her who'd lain coughing blood until she was so weak she couldn't cough so she gasped, gasping until she was too weak to gasp, so she drowned. She didn't want to remember the times she saw two medics stand at the foot of someone's bed, muttering to each other, a bottle in somebody's hand, the meaningful nod, then injection in to the drip line, often somebody shed tears. Bruce hadn't cried, not that she'd seen anyway. But he'd looked at least as bad as she'd ever seen him look after a Hulkout. There was still no sign of Potts.

When they turfed her out and she walked blinking in to the sunlight it didn't feel real. It was evening. A short line of people waited to be admitted. Everything felt like a dream. She'd expected to die. Somehow she'd survived. Her heart and breathing were too fast, she was thin, she was weak, but she was still alive. She just needed to –

"Romanoff!" She looked round. She'd responded to her real name without thinking, she was off her game. Rogers was jogging towards her. He looked thin, and tired. He halted just in front of her and pulled her in to his arms. She felt ribs where there'd been muscle before.

"That's not like you." She said quietly. She didn't think she'd ever seen him hug anyone before.

"You made it." He said to the top of her head. "You made it out." He let her go. She took half a pace back so she could see his face better. "That's three of us now."

"And how many dead?"

"Three. Maximoff died yesterday. She had the lungs one." Romanoff nodded mutely. Rogers sighed deeply. "What are we going to do Tasha?"

"Stay alive."

"And then what? That isn't a plan." For a moment, she saw the madman who'd run behind enemy lines with nothing but a pistol to save one man, then he was gone. He looked down. "Sorry. This is what handling bodies all day does to me. Can I walk you home?" She shook her head.

"I'll be OK."

"You sure? The roads aren't as safe as they used to be."

"I can handle myself."

The entrance to Stark Tower was deserted. There was no doorman, but Jarvis knew her fingerprints.

"Good evening Miss Romanoff." Said the calm disembodied voice as soon as the door closed behind her. "It is good to see you." Of course, Jarvis had worked out that she and Potts had it. "Are you confident that you are not contagious?"

"Medics said I'm not." She was breathing hard from the walk. She'd only been walking and she was out of breath. She hated being weak.

"Please proceed to the lift." The door opened in front of her. She hadn't felt like taking the stairs anyway. But, she thought as the doors closed behind her, it was odd for Jarvis to tell you what to do.

The doors opened again. This wasn't her floor.

"Please proceed to the lounge." Jarvis said. She started to, moving slowly, listening hard. She'd been a spy for far too long to be cavalier if anything felt unusual. An acrid smell met her, vomit. Someone had been sick up here. It had to be fairly recent, it would have dried up and stopped smelling otherwise.

"Jarvis, where's Stark?"

"In the lounge, Miss Romanoff."

"Who else is in the building?"

"Nobody, Miss Romanoff."

"Stark?" She called. Nobody answered. She reached the lounge. "Stark?" A figure lay face down on the counter. Another smell added to the vomit. Spirit alcohol. A bottle lay next to the man – Stark. Collapsed drunk, or killed or maimed and made to look that way. Stark didn't drink himself blind, not any more. He drank, but he usually kept some semblance of control.

"Jarvis," Something crunched under her foot. A piece of paper, scrunched up and lying as though it had been thrown. She scanned it, then the scene made sense. One sentence at the bottom made everything clear.

"We regret to inform you that Virginia Potts died a few hours ago." Romanoff sighed heavily. It shouldn't surprise her. Most who caught MRYP died. She was the exception, not Potts. But part of her wanted there to be an exemption for a woman that strong, that resourceful, that clever; polyglot, CEO, kept Stark in line… That was her mission now. Alcohol poisoning. Make him sick, try to get him re-hydrated. That was about all she was capable of. Natasha dropped her bag, braced her back and started to drag Stark towards the bathroom.

 **Please review. What questions about this world do you still have?**


	8. Chapter 8

**This chapter exists mostly because somebody (Black Victor, was it you?) asked for more detail about how the community we see in chapters 1-5 came about. Another may follow it, but I've been slow for the past week, owing to aggressive Firefly-on-the-brain.**

Rogers closed the door behind the last man in. Stark tower still had power. Nowhere else did. He turned to look at the forty people gathered there; Stark, Romanoff, Banner and he were all that was left of the Avengers, unless Clint had survived too. The rest were people he'd met in other ways; church, one of Sam's veterans, people he'd worked with during the outbreak… they were an odd crowd. But they had one thing in common. He thought that all of them might follow him. They were all standing or sitting and watching him. He drew a slow breath. He never managed to prepare for this sort of thing, he never knew how. All he could ever do was make the best of it as it happened.

"I think you all know why I asked you here." Nobody spoke. "There has been no mains electricity, no water and no gas for two weeks, no state pay for three. Centralised medical care has fallen down, the police aren't coping, even the soldiers aren't coping any more. And there's no more food. Once people realise they can't buy food, they're going to start stealing it. They might start stealing from the dead, but if there's no more food coming, it can only be so long before they start stealing from the living. Once that happens, people are going to start killing." They were looking down, avoiding his eyes and each others'. "Maybe six of us here would stand a chance against somebody with a gun. I don't want to stay here and watch people I care about getting shot over a can of beans." He let that hang for a moment, giving them time to respond.

"What choice do we have?" Stark said. "Yes, it's crap. Almost everyone is dead. The rest are going to kill each other or starve or die of dysentery. Sure, we can dig in, we can try, we can try to be The Avengers but what good will it do? What does it matter if somebody starves a month later than they would have done? There are no good outcomes left."

"Not here." Steve said. "Before it all went to hell there were probably eight million people in this city, now that's maybe half a million, a quarter million. That's too many people in too small a space with not enough food for it to ever stabilise. So we get out. We get out of here, we find somewhere there's still rule of law or we find somewhere we can set up on our own." He looked at them. Stark shook his head. Bruce was looking down, thinking hard.

"I can see a lot of ways that could end badly." He said. "We're not gonna get fuel, we're not gonna get food or water easily en route and since we don't know exactly where we're going, it could be a long ride." William, the pastor, drew breath slowly. He'd started the outbreak with two sons and a daughter. He knew one of his sons was dead, the daughter was alive but widowed, he'd lost touch with the other son.

"If we say 'we'll go up to the city' – the famine is there and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. Therefore let us go to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we will live, if they kill us, we will only die." He said.

"What?" Johnny, Sam's veteran, asked.

"2 Kings 7:4. It's not perfectly applicable, but I think it's quite close. I agree with you, Steven, there's not much hope of surviving if we stay here. Humans are not good. A group this big won't protect each other."

"As soon as we're a moving convoy, we're a target." Romanoff said. "If we do this, we need to be well provisioned, including fuel, before we set off and be willing to kill to keep moving."

"Romanoff, we're going to have to kill to stay alive if we stay here much longer." Rogers answered. "It might be three days before the bullets start flying, it might be twenty. But it is going to happen."

"I really don't want to be here when it does." Banner said quietly. "If you think you can get out of here alive, I'll go with you." Romanoff looked at him for a second, then said

"I didn't say it was a bad idea, I said we needed to do it carefully."

"Look around." Rogers said. "In this room, we have a medic, a nurse, probably the best engineer alive, a mechanic, four ex or current soldiers… I asked all of you here because I think you want to live and because I think you can help us figure out how." Romanoff smiled.

"OK. I'm not gonna lay down and die."

Rogers looked around the room. In any group, there were ringleaders. Once you got those few critical people to follow you, everyone else would.

"This group as it stands?" William asked.

"If you have others you want to bring and you think they'll come, that's fine." The numbers couldn't get too big. Most people only knew three or four people now, everyone else was dead. William met his wife's, Helen's, eyes.

"If they kill us, we will but die." She nodded mutely. "Yes then. We'll come." Others murmured in assent. William was one of the ringleaders. Rogers looked around again, counting silently. That was twenty straight off, twenty he had a decent chance of saving.

"Do you know where you're going?" Johnny asked.

"Not specifically, but West, probably Illinois or Iowa somewhere."

"Why there?"

"It's not too far, you get worse weather on the coast and so long as we stay away from the big cities, we should find some space."

"And that's also towards…" Natasha started. Of course Iowa meant Barton to her.

"I want to look for him Romanoff. Bullets are going to get hard to find sooner or later."

"That's a lot of gas." Stark said.

"But not all cars use gas any more."

"You thinking electrics?" Banner asked.

"They wouldn't get that far." Stark said.

"Stark, you built the first Iron Man suit in a cave under threat of death. Don't tell me you can't make them go far enough." Stark took a moment to respond.

"How long do I have?"

"A week?" Rogers suggested. "There's no way of knowing when it'll all come crashing down, but we'll need a few days to gather supplies." Stark looked up at the ceiling.

"How many vehicles? Electrics tend to be small."

"Let's say fifty-five people and ten seats for supplies." Rogers said. Romanoff shook her head.

"Twenty. We can't bank on finding anything when we get there."

"So you're gonna bring the cars to me?" Stark asked. "Who here can hotwire?" Rogers, Romanoff and Johnny raised their hands. He'd done it. The room was working under the assumption they were all going. Nobody was backing down, turning to leave. They'd come.

"And if they're flat, we drag 'em." Jayden, another gravedigger, added.

"Right. What do we need to find to bring with us?"

 **Does anybody want more of this time period? Or would we rather go back to when the community is up and running?**


	9. Chapter 9

**I did not imagine I would get to chapter nine of this.**

* * *

Steve looked around. Forty-four people, eighteen vehicles, including two pick-ups rigged to run off arc reactors, everything loaded high with all the food they could find, medical supplies, weapons, ammo, tools, hard-wearing clothes… Like the Mayflower's Pilgrims, everything they thought they'd need to start over from nothing. Hopefully they'd do better in their first winter than the Pilgrims had.

Stark came back to the main group, Alfie, the other mechanic, at his heels.

"OK," he said. "we keep speed as constant as we can, aiming for forty miles per hour on freeways, thirty everywhere else. Coast where you can get away with it, if you're driving a stick shift, keep in high gears. The front car has four flags in it; green for go, yellow for slow down, red for stop. If you stop, engine off right away. We have a bit of fuel spare, but not a lot. There's also a radio in every car."

"If shots are fired," Steve carried on, "fighters get up and deal with the threat, everyone else gets down, including you." He said to Banner. "Unless we specifically say otherwise, keep out of fights." Banner nodded slowly.

"If we end up in a gun fight, it… It might not be voluntary."

"We'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Anything else anybody needs to say before we move?" For a moment, nobody spoke, then,

"If I may," William said "I'd like to pray and suggest that we sing 'we rest on thee'." Stark turned away and went back to the vehicles, a few others followed him. William looked around, then bowed his head and closed his eyes. Steve would usually have followed suit. Somehow he didn't quite dare stop looking around.

William didn't pray for long, just long enough to ask for grace, wisdom, protection and faith that God would do what was best, whatever that looked like. Steve was glancing around every few seconds, it felt wrong to do that when somebody was praying, but he couldn't not. They'd started hearing shots over the past couple of days. When the amens had run round and everyone else was looking up too, he felt safer. William just took a breath and started singing.

"We rest on thee, our shield and our defender," By the end of the first line, there were twenty odd voices with him.

"We go not forth alone against the foe,

Strong in thy strength, safe in thy keeping tender,

We rest on thee and in thy name we go."

They were his unit, these few survivors. They'd trusted themselves to him, he was responsible for them, he hoped, prayed, he wouldn't get them all killed. They could not assume anyone to be friendly any more, when resources became scarce, people became feral. Anyone they met could attack them, what they needed was to find a small community willing to take them in. That felt like a very long shot right now. But not as long a shot as surviving the winter in New York would be.

When the song ended, everyone looked at him for instructions. He'd been expecting that.

"You know your car parties. Go pile in." He started up the convoy, he and a man called Sean were in the front truck. He was driving, Sean was reading the map. The roads were virtually deserted now. He hadn't heard an engine, apart from Stark testing theirs, in days. It was eerily quiet.

,

They'd been driving maybe twenty minutes when it happened. A burst of machine gun fire rang to their left. Steve braked hard, pulling his shield from between the seats. Sean was getting down. He could already hear pistol shots, Romanoff was returning fire. He pulled the key out of the ignition and burst out of the car and ran back along the convoy.

Where was the shooter?

No, shooters. There were three masked men with assault rifles crouching among the cars parked up along the road, one was lying bleeding. Romanoff was really, really vulnerable where she was, two others on their side had already taken up guns.

There were more than the three attacking them, there were shots further off too. Steve jumped on to a car one of the masked men was using for cover and landed almost on top of him. Shield edge to head. He went down. The second and third turned on him. He tucked himself behind his shield and drew back, making them move, making them go where he could attack again. Somebody bellowed a curse.

"Just run!" Somebody else shouted. "We've hit the-" another curse word "- Avengers or something!"

"Huh." Stark's voice, slightly echo-y in tone, he'd put the suit on. Steve looked round. Stark was walking across the asphalt in full gear towards him. "Was hardly worth putting the suit on." Steve shook his head.

"Think it was. They know what you're capable of, as soon as they see you, fight's over."

"Think it's worth keeping it on 'till we're out of the city?"

"Yeah, probably. Anyone hurt?" He shouted. Nobody answered. Thank God for that. "Anybody's car need attention?"

"I think we've lost a tyre." Helen called back. Steve nodded.

"Stark,"

"On it."

Steve sighed. That could have been so much worse.

* * *

 **A note for anybody thinking of reviewing: Firstly, thank you. Secondly, I have seen Civil War, you may have seen Civil War, not everybody has yet. Please do not spoil Civil War here or anywhere for at least another week.**


	10. Chapter 10

**This chapter follows the previous one pretty closely (same day), I know it's a week late. Next chapter likely to take at least a fortnight. Enjoy.**

* * *

Steve stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The people in the cars at the head of the convoy looked up. He beckoned.

"No one here." He shouted. "By the look of it, it's been empty for weeks."

It was coming up on sundown. They'd been on the lookout for somewhere to stop for the night when they'd seen signs to a gas station just off the freeway. He, Romanoff, Johnny and Rance (an ex cop) had gone ahead as a scouting party to check it out. The place seemed deserted. It had been picked clean, there was no food and probably no gas – though they'd check – but it did seem to be deserted, fortunately, nobody there to ambush them.

The convoy started their engines again and started to crawl up towards them.

"How likely do you think we are to find people alive in places we stop?" Rance asked Steve.

"Depends." Romanoff answered first. "Depends on where we stop, how many people were there to start with, what the resource situation is like, and not all areas got hit equally." She looked down, then up again. "It's better not to meet people. We have to assume everyone is hostile. Or could infect us." Steve didn't reply. He supposed it was her nature to be cynical, to mistrust everyone. He could still believe that people would be good to each other. They were, weren't they? This group of forty-four, most of whom barely knew each other, were throwing their lot in together and trusting each other.

"Park up in a tight circle." He called. "Nose to tail, as close as you can." His thinking was that the vehicles formed a perimeter fence; shelter, a warning to anyone else that they were a big, organised group, and if it came to it, cover.

,

Food was, of course, scant and uninteresting. But of course Steve had had worse meals in the field. They'd stripped every vacant apartment they'd been able to get in to, including by bashing down doors, of food that was still eatable before they'd set out. At some point, starvation was going to become a real risk, but they were hopefully a couple of months away from that. Steve would have liked to eat until he was full, to eat enough to start putting the weight he'd lost to the infection back on. He'd lost near enough fifty pounds, almost all of it muscle. He was still strong, stronger than any other single person in the group, but he was nowhere near as strong as he could be, as he had been. He was afraid a time would come when he'd need his strength, in this state he might not be enough. But to try to eat enough to regain it was to risk starving the group out sooner.

" _Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."_ Steve smiled almost in spite of himself as the fragment of scripture came to the surface of his mind. It was right though. For the moment, the most important thing was keeping the group together, focused and optimistic.

"Right." He clapped his hands once, which did make everyone look up at him. "Do any of you young things still know Roll Out The Barrel?"

The answer was about ten people, not including any of the Avengers. Jimmy Crack Corn and Sloop John B were a bit more successful, harmonies had started turning up by the third chorus of Sloop John B. Then the sillier songs started turning up, after a while, Stark stood up and led the one about the old woman who swallowed a fly, he sounded much more like Howard when he was singing, then of course somebody had to Find a Peanut. But they were laughing. They'd forgotten that they were still hungry, they'd forgotten their dead for a while, they'd forgotten how many ways they could still all die.

,

"Watches." Steve called as people started to slink away to bed. "Any volunteers?" About six hands went up. "We need two lots of five." A few more hands went up. "Thank you. You, you, you, you and I'll do first shift, we'll come and wake the rest of you up in a few hours. Rance, that side, Helen, to the right, Jethro, the left, Jessie, looking back the way we came." And they went. They didn't question him, they didn't ask what he was going to do, they just trusted him. He had to keep them alive.

The watchers had no flashlights, just radios, they called him over by turning their radio on for a count of one then off again, once, twice, three times or four times, depending on who they were. Steve was on patrol, just walking a circumference, shield on his arm, hoping any invaders would only see him at first, and only shoot at him. The camp quietened down gradually as people fell asleep. The four static watchers sat in the shadows, staring in to the dark, almost invisible unless you knew they were there. Steve padded in circles, changing direction every so often to keep himself from getting too predictable.

,

Nothing at all happened for hours, until it must have been gone midnight and he was thinking about waking the second shift up. But Helen signalled him over. He went and sat down as close to her as he dared and took his shoe off, as though to take a stone out of it.

"What?" He asked her, as quietly as he could.

"I'm not completely sure it isn't my mind," she started. "but I think there's something alive down there." She pointed. Steve picked up a stone and threw it at the cluster of bushes she was pointing at. Something moved, but there was no alarm call, no sound of bolting hooves or wings, nothing to suggest he'd disturbed a wild animal. They were being stalked.

"Stay here." He breathed to Helen and got up. "Deer." He said, more loudly, shaking his head. He didn't believe for a moment that what had tried to dodge his stone was a deer. He walked on towards Rance, then cut back inside the ring of vehicles and laid a hand on Romanoff's shoulder. She was awake before he'd finished saying her name.

"What?"

"Get up. I think there's at least one person to the north watching us."

"Worth waking Stark?" She asked.

"Not sure."

"Best wake him then."

By the time Romanoff and Steve were ready to face who or what ever Helen had seen and Stark was kitting up, half the camp was waking up, watching them. Steve wasn't sure how he felt about that. He didn't want to cause a panic, but if this went badly it might be better if everyone was awake. He and Romanoff slunk back towards Helen, who was staring pointedly off towards Jesse's post.

"They moved?" He asked her.

"That way." She nodded.

"More than one?"

"I'm not sure."

"OK, I take point. Romanoff, don't shoot unless you are very sure you're shooting at an armed hostile."

"Copy."

Steve could feel his guts starting to knot up. There were forty people behind him he had to keep alive. But they had no idea what they were up against, it could be six heavily armed lunatics or one guy with a baseball bat. And if the invader was just hungry, who was he to kill them without warning? That didn't feel right. He reached the tree line, he could half hear, half sense Romanoff somewhere behind him. He stopped, listening hard.

Something moved to his left, it was breathing quite fast, it sounded human. How close was it? It was a cloudy night, he could barely see a thing. Maybe twenty feet? Assuming he didn't crash in to something, he could dash that far. If his adversary had a gun, that was the safest option. He raised his shield, so whoever they were they couldn't get a chest shot, and bolted towards the sound.

A voice cried out, just before his body hit it. A male voice. The body crumpled to the floor, it wasn't a big body. He grabbed out with both hands. If he could control his adversary's hands he'd have won.

"Ethan, run!" The body shouted as Steve's hands found his arms. The body was long and skinny, a boy, not a man. Two sets of running footsteps behind.

"Romanoff! Don't sh-" Steve shouted. But before he'd finished, he heard another voice cry out and the sound of a body falling to the floor. Steve pulled the boy's wrists behind him and wrapped them in one of his hands. "Don't struggle." He warned. The boy obeyed, panting with fright or exertion, Steve wasn't sure which. Nobody else was moving. "Romanoff?"

"I'm fine, was just a kid."

"He alive?" A brief pause.

"Yes." Steve's captive sighed with relief.

"So's mine. Let's get back to somewhere we can see."

"And do what with these two?"

"Hadn't got that far."

"Rogers, what if they're infected? We can't bring them back to camp." Steve hissed in irritation. He hadn't thought of that.

"I'm going to come to you, you're going to take mine, I'm going to carry yours, we just need a bit more light."

Romanoff was happy to comply with that, they led and carried the two boys back out of the trees. Now he saw them in the light, Steve didn't think they could have been over fifteen, the smaller one probably less. They shouted for rope to tie them up, Banner appeared with some, then Romanoff pulled Steve away up the hill, towards where Stark and a few others were looking on.

"We cannot let them go." Romanoff said shortly.

"Romanoff, they're kids."

"Children half that age can be trained killers. Even if they're not, they might report back to a bigger, more dangerous group, or be carrying MRYP. Some people here haven't had it. We let them go, we risk Stark and others dying of the infection, or them bringing back a full squad of armed men."

"I can't believe you're saying this."

"I'm not saying I want to. Killing people that young is unpleasant, sometimes it is the lesser evil. If we want to protect our own, we are going to have to kill sometimes."

"Look at them." William cut in. "They're teenagers. Are we really entertaining the idea of shooting a pair of teenage boys in cold blood?"

"I am not sanctioning that." Steve said firmly.

"It _is_ the safest option for the rest of us." Romanoff said, looking at the ground.

"They're kids." Banner repeated.

"If we let them go, they could run back and try to snatch raid us, and potentially shed MRYP in to the camp, or go and fetch a whole lot more."

"Look, she's right." Rance cut in. "There are four people here who didn't get it. They'll all die if they infect us."

"If they were going to give anyone MRYP, they'd have to have been exposed for the first time in the last two to six days." Banner countered. "How likely do you think that is?"

"Do you want to bet with Stark's life?"

"So instead of risking me, you want to kill two teenagers in cold blood?" Stark asked.

"The point of this group is that we keep each other alive."

"Implicit in that is the idea that we're worth saving, if-"

"Enough." Steve said firmly. Much to his relief, everyone else stopped talking. "Banner, correct me if I'm wrong, once you've had MRYP, you can't get it again."

"Mercifully not." Banner said.

"In that case, you and I can handle them safely. We just have to keep ourselves separate for a day or two. Before we make any decisions, Banner, take a look at them, decide whether you think they might possibly have MRYP-"

"If they look clean now, they might still spread it. It takes a few days to show."

"There's no risk to you in checking. And I am going to have a word with them, see what they're willing to tell us."

"You can't trust anything they say." Romanoff said. "They'll say whatever they think will keep them alive."

"I know. I'd still rather try to use their… inventions than ours."

The older boy was sitting up, eyes wide with fear, the younger was coming to. Steve set and electric lantern on the ground between them and sat down.

"You gave us quite a fright." The boys didn't reply. "Sorry if we seemed… excessive, we just had no idea who or what you were. We didn't want to take any chances." Still no reply. "What are your names?" Silence. "I don't have a gun, I'm not going to kill you. I'm just trying to work some things out." There was a long pause.

"I'm Caleb." The older boy said quietly. "'s Ethan." He gestured towards the other.

"You can call me The Captain, most people seem to." Caleb looked up at him.

"You military?"

"Ex. I'm not sure anyone is really military any more."

"My half brother was. Haven't seen him since all this started."

"So you're with your family?" Caleb shook his head.

"'s just me and Ethan now. We're cousins. Don't think anyone else is still alive." That was likely to be true. Most people had lost most people they knew.

"So who are you with?" The boys looked at each other. "It can't be just the two of you, you wouldn't last."

"'s just us." Caleb said again.

"How do you get enough food?"

"We steal. We try to take from people who've died, but there's not a lot left."

"So you thought you'd try us." Caleb nodded.

"But we won't try again if you let us go. There's too many of you, you're too fast." Steve sighed.

"The problem is, how do I know you aren't scouts for a huge armed group who can just come and wipe us out with automatic rifles?" The two boys just looked at each other, Ethan seemed to be awake enough to have caught up.

"We… we're not." Caleb said.

"But I only have your word on that." There was a long silence. Steve got up and headed back to the group.

,

"They say they're alone" he said.

"They say." Someone repeated at once.

"And I am making it clear right now-" Steve continued. "that I am not shooting, or letting anyone else shoot, a pair of unarmed teenagers. So either we let them go now or we hang on to them."

"For how long?" Banner asked.

"Maybe just the night, maybe longer."

"MRYP." Banner said shortly. "I know it isn't likely, but if we're keeping them, we need to know as soon as they start showing symptoms."

"That's quarantine more or less." Romanoff said. "That's hard to manage on the road."

"But it's not impossible." Banner said. "We're traveling in cars of two or three, we stick them in a car with one quarantine martial, we'll be fine."

"But we'd need to surrender a medic to do it." Rance said.

"I'll do it." Banner said. "If someone needs to, they're not a threat to me."

Steve stood by while Banner looked the boys over, and decided there was no sign of MRYP. The boys just accepted it, they'd probably worked out there was no point in fighting.

"As I said earlier," Steve started, as Banner stepped back. "we're not going to kill you. In fact, I'm going to give you a choice. Either we let you go when we head out in the morning, so you can't set anyone on us, or, if you really are alone and you've had enough of it, you can come with us. We're all from New York City, trying to get out to somewhere there's enough food to keep us all alive. We don't have that much of a plan. If you do come with us, you'll have to stay just with Banner until we're sure you don't have MRYP."

"We both had it already." Caleb cut in.

"Either way, you stay with Banner for a few days. And you'll be expected to fall in line, do your share of chores and do as you're told. We don't have the time or the space to fight amongst ourselves. I'm going to walk away now and let you two talk about it."

,

Come the morning, two thin, ragged looking boys followed Banner to one of the cars and got in.


	11. Chapter 11

**This installment took me rather longer than I expected. Sorry**

 **Partly it's longer than I thought it was going to be, partly my longsuffering Beta (Captainarwenpond) and I clashed heads over this.**

* * *

A lot of you have been asking for this one, or more accurately chapter 12 which immediately follows it (I aim to post in about 24 hours time). I hope it lives up.

"Romanoff." Natasha looked over her shoulder. Rogers was walking up to her. She turned to face him. "Banner's confident that nobody here has MRYP. You know the way to Barton from here?"

"Yes." They'd been here for two weeks now. They'd stumbled across this small town where the disease had killed all but twenty-two residents and moved in, they'd been welcomed. They had competent fighters, a medic and Stark, who could fix nearly anything. They were valuable. They could keep these twenty safe. Rogers had been refusing to let her go after Barton alone and insisting he couldn't spare anyone to go with her since they got in to this State. Rogers took a deep breath.

"Go fetch him."

Natasha frowned at him.

"Alone?"

"No. Take Banner."

"Has he agreed to come?"

"Yes. I'm not splitting you two up, you've got a better chance of controlling the Hulk than anyone else has, you'll be safer with him and you're probably the only one who can bring Barton in." Natasha took a breath and released it again. If Clint thought his family was safer away from them, he wouldn't come, and they wouldn't be able to make him. But there was no point in telling Rogers that.

"When do we leave?"

"Some time tomorrow. Stark says he needs a few more hours to rig the truck to run off the new power source. Should have more than enough range on it so long as you don't drive too fast. How long is the drive from here?"

"I'd say ten-eleven hours, but with no traffic, nine, but driving at fifty the whole way, probably back up to twelve." Rogers nodded. He didn't exactly seem enthusiastic about sending her off, more resigned.

"OK, if you're not back in three days we'll try to send people out after you."

"Don't." She said. "Nothing will kill Bruce. Whether I'm alive or dead he'll make it back to you eventually. Don't risk anybody else for us." Rogers sighed again.

"OK, leave tomorrow, whenever you're ready, take a few days of supplies." She turned to go. "And Romanoff?" She turned back. "Be careful."

,

Stark was talking to Bruce about the car, and by the look of things had been for a while, when Natasha got there.

"So if – and I say 'if' – the gearbox goes, pull this out of here and plug that in instead, that should work as a replacement unless it's the actual lever, but I checked that, that should hold. Efficiency correlates negatively to speed, but that correlation is non-linear. Up to thirty it doesn't matter at all, slow increase until about fifty, then sharper increase up to seventy, then don't you even dare. You'll blow the circuits out in ten minutes." Bruce was just nodding patiently, as though Tony had already said all this once. He looked more than a bit relieved when he saw her.

"We all set?" He asked. She nodded.

"You heading out?" Stark asked. Natasha nodded again. "Then good luck, I hope you find him. I hope he's OK." Natasha dumped her luggage in to the back of the pickup and climbed in to the driver's side. Bruce clasped Tony's hand briefly then got in shotgun. Natasha looked across at him.

"You OK?"

"Yeah." He didn't really sound it.

"They've got a veterinarian, they'll be fine without a doctor for a couple of days." She started the truck. It had an electric's quiet whir rather than the cough of its old petrol engine.

"That's not what I'm worried about." Bruce said quietly. "There's no law any more."

"So..?" She pulled out of the garage and turned on to the road, heading back towards the Interstate. Bruce sighed.

"So if people see something they want, they can take it, no matter who they have to hurt or kill." She glanced across at him. "I can imagine people being willing to kill for a working vehicle."

"True, probably more true if I were on my own."

"And if someone does…"

"I fight first." She said calmly. "If I take a hit or I can't win it on my own, you step up. Nobody is going to stand and fight you. We might be challenged, we won't be fought."

"Tasha, if-"

"And you won't kill me. The Other Guy will not attack me."

"He has before."

"Years ago. If you change voluntarily, you keep almost complete control now. Even if you're forced, your control is a lot better than it was. I do not believe for an instant that you will kill me."

"You trust me a lot more than I do."

Natasha reached for the turn signal, then stopped herself. Who the hell was she signalling to?

,

They'd set off at about two in the afternoon – nobody was bothering too much about time of day any more, it was day when it was light, night when it was dark - so there was no way they'd make Clint's by dark, not cruising at fifty to preserve the battery.

Natasha started to get wary when it started to get dark. She was reluctant to drive along in the dark with headlights on, declaring herself to anyone in a three-mile radius, but she didn't quite trust herself not to hit something on unfamiliar roads in the dark and they could not afford a crash, even a minor one, so once dusk began to gather, she turned off and pulled over. Open country, no cover for miles, no chance of being snuck up on.

"We stopping the whole night or just for a bit?" Bruce asked, getting out.

"Until it's light enough to drive with no lights." She replied. "How well do you sleep in the open?"

"Probably no worse than I sleep anywhere else."

"Well that goes for both of us. You hungry?"

They had a bit of the packaged food, the supposedly non-perishable stuff, that they'd scavenged from the houses of the dead in the town they'd settled in. Food that didn't need preparation. They ate in near silence, side by side against the truck, her forearms brushing his occasionally. He wasn't pulling back. She wondered if he would if she came forward. Maybe she ought to slow her approach. She'd scared him before by coming on too fast. First thing, establish herself as eligible; indicate by body language that she was a woman in the presence of a man and willing to be approached. She started very gently, as though approaching a married man or one on the opposite side of a dispute, tilting her head, exposing her neck, glancing at him quickly from under her eyelashes, repeated, short eye contact, displaying interest, not threat, picking the conversation up, looking for the topics where they had most in common; the other Avengers, the strange places you end up hiding when on the run...

He was responding, not very strongly, but he was responding. He wasn't shutting her down. He was returning the eye contact in a similar pattern. When she shifted to face him rather than sit beside him, he mirrored her.

He was reciprocating, but he was not in any way trying to push forwards. She was dictating pace, entirely on her own. This was, in a way, trickier because of gender scripts. She had to break the touch barrier ahead of him, but if she did it too pointedly, he'd pull back. If she, say, stroked his face or laid a hand on his neck, she'd probably lose any progress from the evening. If she broke the rules, invited the man to come to her, he might not be so inclined to pull back, just not come forward. That probably wouldn't dent him so much.

"Right." She said, getting to her feet as the stars began to appear. "I think we should turn in." She pulled the tarp from the back of the truck and laid it out on a flat-looking piece of ground. Bruce got up and helped her, and kept on helping her as she laid out the blankets. It was effectively a double bed. That didn't seem to concern him. Good. She stripped off her shoes and her jacket, turned back the top two blankets and sat down. Bruce had also taken his shoes and his sweater off, but he wasn't looking at her much any more. Natasha looked up. The band of the Milky Way was thick and bright, it was most nights now.

"A lot of stars." She said.

"Light pollution." Bruce replied, sitting down beside her. "All the main power grids collapsed, so no street lights, so far less light pollution, so stars." She sat there a long moment, just waiting to see what he did next, but he didn't seem inclined to do anything, so she kicked her legs under the blankets and wriggled down.

"Come on." She said, tapping the space just behind her. Much to her surprise, she felt him settle himself there, his front only a couple of inches from her back. One of his arms was resting on her waist. He'd broken the touch barrier. He'd advanced. Experimentally, Natasha nestled her shoulders back against him. He didn't pull back. She waited.

Nothing. He didn't close his arms around her waist, bring his mouth down to her shoulder, bring his hips in against hers… If she went any further she risked scaring him off, and this was already quite a bit further than he'd let her go since the last time they'd been at Clint's together. How… effective he'd been against Ultron seemed to have set him back. She needed to give him time. He'd come, but he needed time.

 **I repeat: I ship where canon ships. Blame Whedon, not me.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Follows Chapter 11 directly**

* * *

They didn't have too far to go in the morning, Natasha knew the series of lefts and rights to get to Clint's once they were off the Freeway as well as she knew the Pas de Quatre. He'd taken here there so many times in her first years at SHIELD, all the time they'd been partners, she'd read to children for the first time, held a baby for the first time, Clint had sat down with her on the porch there and asked her to pretend to be his woman so that nobody would think to look for his wife. She was a very different person now to the Russian turncoat who'd first turned up this driveway all those years ago. She braked sharply.

"What?" Bruce asked.

"Grass over the track." She pointed. "That wasn't there before."

"You think it's a trap?"

"This is Clint we're talking about." She got out of the car and took a pole from the back. Experimentally, she poked the new grass. As she'd expected, it sank dramatically. "Pit trap. Leave the car. And watch where you put your feet." He didn't look happy about it, but he did as he was told, fell in to file behind her, and watched exactly where she put her feet.

They hadn't been walking long, maybe two or three minutes, Natasha had skirted a tripwire and what might have been some sort of subsidence trap and they were approaching the first outbuildings, when a male voice called

"Stop right there, turn around and walk away."

"Clint-" Where was he?

"I don't care who you are, get out of here."

"Clint." She repeated, more loudly.

He rose out of the grass, bow drawn and aimed at her, maybe fifty yards away.

"Tasha." He said coldly. "Banner." Natasha showed him her hands. Bruce did the same. He was breathing a little harder than he had been. "Are you clean?"

"We both had it months ago." Natasha said. She saw Clint's string arm tense further.

"People stop being contagious within two weeks of clinical recovery." Bruce said. Clint didn't pay him much attention.

"Tasha, don't think I won't kill you if you threaten us. All five of us are alive so far, none of us caught it. Go back and tell SHIELD I'm staying here two years."

"Clint, it's gone." That seemed to get his attention. "SHIELD, Congress, the FBI, all of it. The death toll must be in the billions globally." He stared at her, mouth open slightly.

"How?"

"And neither of us can infect you. We've both been clear for three months." Clint lowered his bow and looked at her for a long moment.

"Do you want to come in then?" He turned and started to walk back towards the house. Natasha followed him. She knew better than to try to say anything to him yet. The fall of SHIELD would have shocked him, it had shocked her. Better to let him start to take that in.

As they neared the house, Clint called

"Laura, it's Tasha, we're fine." Where was Laura? Natasha cast her eyes around and saw Laura standing up from behind a barricade next to the house, a good barricade at that. She looked so tired.

"Expecting trouble?" Natasha asked.

"Holing up." Laura called. "Better a false alarm than missing the alarm."

"Where are the kids?"

"Inside." Laura replied. "Is there any way you could be contagious?"

"No." Bruce replied. "We both had it and lived months ago. You stop shedding in a week or two." Laura nodded, then turned back to the house, unloading her gun.

"Cooper! Lila! It's OK, come see who it is."

"The baby?" Natasha asked. Laura nodded. A shadow passed her eyes.

"He's OK now." But something had happened to scare them. Two small heads appeared round the front door. Cooper and Lila.

"Auntie Nat!"

"Auntie Nat!" She let her face break in to a broad grin and strode towards them. She dropped to her knees as she reached them and pulled them in to her arms.

"Daddy said we might not see you again." Lila started.

"Hey, I didn't know we would until she turned up on the drive just now." Clint cut in.

"Does this mean we can go out again?" Lila asked.

"Of course it doesn't." Cooper said. "Auntie Nat is only one person. It still isn't safe." Lila looked over her shoulder at Clint for confirmation. Clint sighed heavily.

"I wish he wasn't, but your brother's right Lila. Auntie Nat being safe doesn't change anything."

"Actually that's what we came here to talk to you about." Natasha said, in Russian. Clint would understand her, Lila wouldn't. Clint sighed again and replied in Russian.

"Can it wait a few hours? They haven't seen anyone except me, Laura and each other in months. Can you let them enjoy being with you?"

"Da." Natasha said quietly.

,

A few hours one way or another would be worth it to bring Clint in, so Natasha was patient. She played with the children while Laura and Clint made food and talked to Banner. After lunch was cleared away, Clint sent the children outside, Laura sat down with Nathaniel in her lap, Clint sat down beside her, elbows on his knees.

"How much federal stuff is down?" He asked.

"So far as we know, all." Natasha said. "SHIELD was deliberately infected, so was Congress, police at all levels haven't been paid in months, we haven't seen any evidence of the military. This is no longer a state."

"What about other countries?" Laura asked.

"We don't know everything." Natasha said. "The internet went down ages ago. We know India collapsed, we suspect North Korea has, it went suspiciously quiet, we have reports suggesting Russia fell apart, China was decimated… Last we knew it was in pockets of Africa, had gone through most of Asia and was working its way through Europe, and I doubt they managed to hold its advance in Central America either, so it probably did get down to Colombia and out. If there are states left still standing, there can't be many of them."

"So we're in anarchy." Clint said.

"More or less."

Clint sighed heavily and looked at Laura.

"We spent so long hiding from the system." She said. Clint nodded.

"Do you understand why I'm going to tell you that bigger groups are safer?" Clint looked up at her, then away again.

"I'm sure you knew I'd say that that depends a whole lot on who the group is and how it's run."

"With you, sixty-five. Small enough that everyone knows everyone, big enough to cover most major skill areas. About two-thirds New Yorkers, one third Illinoians. Of the Avengers, so far as we know, we three, Stark and Rogers are left."

"Maximoff? Rhodes?"

"Dead, so's Wilson, and Fury, but I'll believe that when I see it."

"Coulson?"

"No idea."

Clint shifted and looked away. "I'll believe he's dead in ten years. He's had us before."

Natasha smiled, in spite of herself. "Clint, Laura, as hunger gets worse, raiding bands are only going to get more violent. I know you're a tiny target, not worth bothering with and, for a group of five, you'll do pretty well at defending yourselves, but bands are going to get bigger over time as well. You might stop ten men from getting to your children, but will you stop twenty? Thirty? It is going to come." Clint and Laura looked at each other. She was getting to him. She knew she was, but she hadn't won yet.

"We were banking on some sort of rule of law, even martial law." Clint said. She waited. "How many people… I guess all the cities will empty out."

"We were attacked by a group of five a while back, but think about how it always goes down in anarchies." She said. "We'll be facing organised groups of fifty soon enough. The group we are will have a good chance. We have Rogers, Stark with his gear and double redundancy, half a dozen amateur rifles, an ex-cop and four soldiers. Add you in, we can probably take out fifty gunmen without any casualties." Clint looked at Bruce. "And of course if we think we're losing…"

"Hasn't happened yet." Bruce said.

Clint dropped his head in to his hands again.

"Can we have a while to think about it?" Laura asked, putting a hand on Clint's shoulder.

"Sure." Natasha got up to look for Cooper and Lila. Bruce followed her.

'

It took about ninety minutes; four rounds of hide and seek, showing them round the new treehouse, two games of snap and two of irish snap, before Clint emerged and called the kids over. As he did, he caught her eye. In that moment she knew. The Hawkeye would come. They would keep him and his family safe, just as she'd always promised she would.

* * *

 **And there's Clint, as promised.**

 **At present, I have three plots left before I run out of ideas, two very short, one probably five or six chapters long.  
Talk to me; what do you want?**


	13. Chapter 13

**This is set a week or two after the Bartons arrived.**

* * *

It was maybe two hours after sunrise. Days were still getting longer, thankfully. If they were lucky they'd have some of the stuff they'd planted here ready for harvest. They had Barton now, his bow would help them, but they were also nearly seventy people now. That was a lot of mouths to feed. It was going to be a very lean winter, and they still had work to do with the buildings. Rogers drove his spade in to the dry ground again. They were trying to sort out at least basic water treatment, which at the moment amounted to filtering it and boiling it. Both Banner and Hayley, the veterinarian, had warned of massive disease outbreaks if they didn't get this sorted. Not MRYP, but things that could still debilitate the entire settlement for over a week and kill the young and the old. Stark was working on electrical generators. At present, power was scarce, clean water was scarce, and food was getting that way. And Rogers didn't see how things were going to get better fast enough to get them through the winter, particularly if people kept turning up and asking to join the group. They'd had nine people now, in a four, a three and a two. They'd set up a quarantine protocol for new arrivals, Banner had volunteered to run it.

As things were, they were going to starve. Not all of them, not right now, but over winter they'd run out of stored stuff and all get so weakened they wouldn't be able to sort out enough crops for the year to follow, or they wouldn't be able to fend off the armed bands when they came, which they inevitably would. So they prayed. They prayed for something to change.

Rogers kept digging, with five of the other strongest men in the settlement, until the sun was high in the sky and they were running with sweat. Then somebody rang a gong (a repurposed bin lid) and called them for food. They didn't say much to each other as they went, until something bright, something vast, appeared in the sky. Rogers looked up, shielding his eyes. A lot of people ran for cover. Stark emerged from one place, Romanoff from another.

It landed. A vast, red cloaked man suddenly stood in the street. In his hands, he held the ends of six pieces of rope, each was tied to the head of a cow. The cows were panniered like pack ponies. But Rogers's attention was held by the man.

"Thor." Stark said behind him.

Thor dropped the ends of the rope - the cows didn't move - and strode forward to throw his arms around Stark. "My friends, it is good to see you alive." He released Stark and put his arms around Rogers instead – he was really very strong.

"Where were you?" Stark asked coldly.

Thor released Rogers and sighed heavily. "Asgard. I am truly sorry that I could not come before, the Allfather forbade it. He would not suffer any person to risk bringing disease back to Asgard. I begged him to send healers to try and stop the outbreak, but he would not risk them against the plague."

"Do you know how many of us died?" Stark asked.

"I know it numbers in billions."

"Was that-"

"Stark." Rogers said quietly. "What's done is done."

"I do not ask you to forgive it." Thor said quietly. "Only that you accept what help the Allfather would let me offer you." He looked over his shoulder. Most of the settlement had gathered round to look now. "These beasts." He said, speaking to everyone in earshot now. "They are not chosen for beauty, not for tenderness of meat or richness of milk. I chose them because they are gentle in spirit and hardy to hunger and disease. Each of them gives milk and carries a calf within her, they will be born in your next Spring. They carry milled grain on their backs, fit to feed man or beast, the beast with the white face carries seed grain that should grow well in your soils."

Rogers's mouth fell slightly open as he looked at the animals, still standing quietly in the middle of the road. They might be enough. Six cows and that much grain… he didn't have a very firm idea of how far that much food would go, but it would certainly help. "I… Thank you."

Thor nodded once. "I would esteem it a great dishonour to see such mighty warriors as you fight off a Chitauri armada, lead a people to safety to start a new life then faint with hunger. I do not know if I will be able to help you again. If I am able, I will return." He squared his feet and looked skyward, as though preparing to go back.

"Thor." He looked back at Rogers. "Is Jane okay? Did she survive?"

Thor looked down. "Yes. Yes, Jane Foster lives. Heimdal!"

 **As ever, please review.  
** If anybody here reads MI-5/Spooks (long shot, I know), please look up my new fic 'Lost and Found'


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